The Dress That Changed My Life

Five writers reflect on the clothes—this dress, that jacket, those damned love-them-hate-them glasses—that become so much more than clothes. Today, the dress that changed everything.

It was a Thea Porter gypsy dress. Does anybody remember Thea Porter? The bodice was gold lamé covered with sequins, and it plunged dangerously, pressing my boobs together. I wore it in the Fear of Flying book-tour days in the early 1970s, and I remember all the men who stared into it as if transfixed. The skirt was black chiffon, and the sequins left a trail like bread crumbs in Hansel and Gretel's forest. It cost what I then thought of as a fortune. I can't remember what that was. Whenever I wore it in London or New York or L.A., men looked only at my breasts.

I felt powerful in it. It was my choice whether they got to unzip me or not. One of them did, and I never saw him again. Another one didn't, and he became my friend for life. I wore it first in London, to some very posh club where my then publisher was a member. Was it the Garrick? Or the Reform? I can't remember. I do remember that I had to call in the maid at the Savoy to zip it—the bodice was that tight. I couldn't eat in it; I could only drink. The skirt had tracings of gold braid. You had to wear it with gold sandals. I had many pairs of those.

When I think of that dress, it transports me to a time when we thought it was elegant and sexy to be a writer. Back when writers still went on talk shows (which was, in fact, the last place I wore my dress—Johnny Carson also stared at my boobs). We thought we were following in the footsteps of the greats—Colette, Simone de Beauvoir—now the names of my poodles! We thought there was nothing more powerful than being a novelist. That was before the Internet ground everyone into "content."

Other dresses I wore in those days also had sequins that left a trail. I loved leaving a trail. I also loved British designers like Thea Porter and Zandra Rhodes. There were still whiffs of swinging London in the air. It was a time of freedom, when everyone chose their own clothes! Now that's terribly old-fashioned. You have to have a stylist to reinforce your "brand." Isn't that sad?

I think my feelings about clothes came from my mother, who was an artist and onetime designer. She bought the best designer clothes on sale, took them apart, and remade them so they suited her perfectly. She would have been horrified if anybody had worn the same clothes as she did. Since she and my father traveled all over Asia, she was completely capable of putting an antique obi together with a dress by an American designer. She believed clothes were an art form, a means of self-expression; she surely communicated that idea to me. Her jewelry was as exotic as her clothes. Long before anybody else, she wore Indian and Japanese pieces, and she wore colors Americans had not yet discovered, like red, pink, and orange. She loved looking sexy, and she loved glitter and sequins. In that way, I've followed her trail. She always wore perfume and felt naked without it. I've followed her in that too—even inventing my own scent from two different perfumes. She always wore Joy. Sometimes I can't believe how much I miss her.

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